Yet Again the NRA Sells Out Freedom to the Democrats

From the NRA press release on the day of the Citizens United decision, Wayne LaPierre called the decision “…a defeat for arrogant elitists who wanted to carve out free speech as a privilege for themselves and deny it to the rest of us.”SOURCE

There are few organizations purportedly on the side of freedom that aggravate me more than the National Rifle Association.In fact, these days I cringe when I see good conservatives with their lifetime member sticker from the NRA on the back of their cars. I support Gun Owners of America, which is a consistent and uncompromising defender of the second amendment, not a weak little girl of an organization protecting itself while throwing everyone else under the bus.But that’s what the National Rifle Association is doing. You and I are willing to stand together because we know we either stand together or hang separately. The NRA legislative strategy in the past few years has been to hang everybody else so they can be the last man standing — more interested in maintaining the veneer of bipartisanship than actually standing up for the second amendment.The Democrats are trying to come up with a new law to respond to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on campaign finance rules. The NRA had objected to the Democrats’ proposal, but then secured a carve out for themselves from the legislation and have dropped their objection.

The new agreement would exempt organizations that have over one million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states, and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations, from the disclosure requirements. The NRA, with four million members, would fall into the exempted category and will not oppose the DISCLOSE Act now, according to Democratic sources.

So if you are a small organization that just started up to defend freedom, you are screwed. But if you’ve been collecting a large file of members for decades off the image of Charlton Heston while repeated screwing conservatives, you’ll be safe.This is just the NRA not wanting competition for itself. If they were really committed to freedom, let alone the second amendment, they should be encouraging more freedom loving, second amendment loving organizations to rise and fight. Instead, they are collaborating with the left to shut out competition.Remember, the NRA had to be cajoled into opposing Sotomayor.The NRA refused to oppose the most anti-gun Attorney General nomination in American history.The NRA supported Dede Scozzafava and it attacked Marco Rubio.Now the NRA is endorsing the Democrat in Ohio against John Kasich while collaborating with the Democrats on restricting the freedom of speech.Remember, the NRA also opposed taking the Heller case to the Supreme Court because it was too scared of what might happen.Gun Owners of America never compromises on the Second Amendment.The one bit of good news here is that Mitch McConnell is a serious first amendment advocate and while I’ve been open with my criticisms of him, he and I typically stand shoulder to shoulder on this issue and I hope he’ll kill it off in the Senate.